‘If only Nick would apply the same enthusiasm to his course as he did to that power saw,’ Sal laughed.
Sal’s not one to sit around and watch, but she had to that morning. She’d brought with her S’pose I Die by Hector Holthouse. It was an intriguing story about the adventures of the first white woman into the pastoral leases of western Cape York.
‘Compared to what they endured our little mustering camp’s pretty tame,’ Sal said over a billy-made mug of coffee.
‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ I replied.
There was nothing left to do that afternoon and we all went into Mitchell to meet Tommy. He had flown to Roma and then met the Charleville bus. When we got back out to the camp I caught him having a few pensive moments while he sat on the ‘kitchen’ log.
‘Double Bay to here,’ he said soberly. ‘Gee Dad, it’s a bit of a shock, all in one day.’
I knew exactly what Tom meant. Even after long flights, people in Europe or America basically alight to physical conditions similar to those they left behind. Modern airports, coffee shops, taxis, traffic-filled streets and the smell of tarmac. Out here we were ninety kilometres from the nearest village in dry scrub that in midwinter produced not the slightest vestige of the softness and freshness of suburban gardens.
Tommy, however, loved a bit of adventure and often asked me when the next outback trip was planned. Following the wool crash there had not been one for some years. We had gone to the Gulf together in 1984. Tom was only eight then and too young to join his brothers for a week on the ski slopes. When we all regrouped at home about ten days later it was Tommy who had all the adventure stories and his brothers were very quiet, for canoeing in crocodile-infested rivers and exploring wild remote gorges in the Territory made skiing on overcrowded trails seem almost boring.
Next morning we headed for Claravale soon after dawn. I had telephoned Gil from Mitchell and he said the horses would be in the yard waiting for us. It was about fifteen kilometres to Claravale over a rough track and when we arrived Gil offered to float the horses over in his truck. It was a major inconvenience for him, I thought, and I hesitated for a few moments. He insisted and said if the boys rode over the days were too short for any hope of a muster. I knew he was right and it had been worrying me. Also we had to take what we got in one day. The country within a kilometre of the bore was eaten out. There was nowhere to feed the cattle out while we mustered for stragglers.
Gil had three horses picked out. One was a big bay gelding that nearly snorted the place down. I thought it was all bluff, but even so when Richard got on I was very relieved to see the tail lift and the gelding walk calmly around the yard. The next horse was a black gelding of about fifteen hands, named Black Cotton, which Gil told us had been foaled about the same time as the notorious Fine Cotton ring-in case had come to light. Nick was given Black Cotton and if straws had been used I felt Nick had drawn the longest, for the third horse I didn’t like.
Most horses have soft, expectant eyes. This dark bay had what we horsemen call bad eye. Such horses watch you, but never directly. They watch out of the side of the eye. They don’t like humans and want nothing to do with us. You never see their ears pricked forward.
Tom and I strapped him and upon tightening the girth he ran backwards. I got Tom to lead him for a while, first just walking, then trotting. All eyes were on us now. I am sure Gil and his man were quite amused, but they were too polite to show it. Before finally coming home and sinking his roots in the family station, Gil had worked in the Territory cattle camps and managed stations in the Carnarvons. When I first saw these men ride I felt greatly humbled. I had ridden in about two thousand races on the track, but when I watched these men gallop heedlessly through heavy scrub I felt as much a horse veteran as a city yuppie would have.
On one occasion I saw Gil chasing a steer along a steep-banked creek. The steer jumped two metres, landed in deep water and he must have thought freedom was on the other side. But Gil followed. He and the horse nearly disappeared from sight in the water, so enormous was the jump. I think the stockmen of the Carnarvons are the most fearless riders on earth and they think nothing of it, because they are reared to it.
Tom wasn’t nervous and I made sure what was in my mind stayed there. Horses that run backwards on mounting will rear over backwards if the mouth bit is given a sudden pull. Tom got on and I held the near rein, but only gently. The gelding took two steps back. Gently I coaxed him forward and told Tommy to walk him on a loose rein.
The dark bay did nothing and for the rest of the mustering camp did nothing wrong. Richie’s big bay shied on the first day, but compensated by bounding up mountain sides like an overgrown goat. Nick’s Black Cotton was a delight for him.
Gil and the boys loaded the horses and we set off for the paddock. With washouts and gutters along the track the trip took an hour. They dropped the tail board at the unloading mound near the bore and the boys swung into the saddle, eager to start.
My immediate concern was to get the boys out and back with no one lost. I drew a map of the paddock on the ground with a long stick. Richard was to ride the northern scrub valleys and Nick and Tom the plateau, which took in about a thousand hectares. In the cool winter sun I expected the cattle to move along without much pushing and converge on the bore.
I began to give basic instructions about using the sun as a compass. They let me go on for a couple of minutes, then they explained to me how to correlate the sun with the hour hand on a watch. Their cadet camps hadn’t been a waste of time after all! For a moment I felt like daddy bear taking the bear scouts on a picnic. When they were little, I must have read that story to each one of them a hundred times.
The boys had their lunches in saddlebags and I didn’t expect to see cattle or a rider for hours. I muttered something to Sal about looking for feed.
‘Do you think we should?’ Sal had that worried mum look.
‘The cows can’t come back in here.’
Reluctantly Sal got into the four-wheel drive and we left. If she had any doubts then, she had none by the time we had reached the pass. We saw a little mob coming in for water and stopped. To stay on track they had to cross the road. Their coats were dry and on their briskets I saw rubbed hair—the winter lice had arrived early for these parts, hastening a rapid drop in condition.
We drove on beyond the pass. The soil was sandy and the pine forest hugged the road for some kilometres. Then we dropped into a low valley, hemmed in from the west by sandstone escarpments. The pine gave way to brigalow, and there was a good coverage of dry grass grazed on by some longhorns camped just off the road. They rose quickly to their feet as we approached and I stopped to have a good look at them. Their condition was quite good and they didn’t seem to be affected by lice, which flourish on cattle losing condition.
Only three kilometres further on we crossed a cattle grid and entered a paddock that appeared not to have been stocked for years. There were no telltale walking pads and the scrub grasses were tall and brittle-dry. I saw an old vehicle track disappear into the brigalow and decided to follow it. It led to a trough. It was dry. No water for years, but it was in good order. I juggled the float valve and could see no reason why it wouldn’t shut off. The connecting polythene pipe had been simply laid on top of the ground. Sal felt like a walk too, so I grabbed the rifle and we followed it. The brigalow was thick and we didn’t see the galvanised tank until we reached the foot of a little flat-topped hill. An old vehicle track, which had been used to bring in the materials, led to the tank. Another pipe came from the south to the tank. That was the supply line. Somewhere there was a bore. The tank itself was huge, I thought about thirty thousand gallons. It hadn’t been used for a long time and the rust had eaten holes through the iron. But the structure was solid and could be fibreglassed.
‘If the bore still works we can get water.’
Sal looked at the rust holes and the supply line that seemed to emerge from the scrub like a long black snake. ‘No water he
re for years means a broken-down bore,’ she said gloomily.
We walked back not feeling very confident.
‘Not much good worrying about the water if there’s only brigalow scrub.’ I said ‘We’ll go back to the road and see if there’s another track.’
‘Please don’t take any risks,’ Sal pleaded. ‘The boys will need us. They’ve never been in anything like this.’
I had to drive another five kilometres before I found another track. It ran due west and was partly overgrown.
‘Scratch the car,’ Sal said hopefully, wishing I’d stop.
The car lurched and rocked and the sucker growth on the track went under the bullbar. ‘I didn’t borrow the money to buy this thing to be a yuppie you know.’
Sal remained quiet. She was being very brave. As the depth of the forest closed behind us I noticed a little fear tighten the skin on her cheekbones. It’s ironic, but it takes a little fear to heighten the beauty of a woman. Unless endowed with extraordinary beauty, a bored woman will become plain.
I pushed on for about twenty minutes and a little voice from my subconscious began to murmur something about irrational obstinacy when suddenly we burst into open country. A kilometre to the west I could see the forest line and to the south a range rose one hundred and fifty metres above the plain. I couldn’t believe it and got out of the car. The buffel grass had gone wild and was up to my thighs. It was winter dry, but each tussock was like a big armful of hay. Everywhere lay charcoal and as my eyes adjusted to the new scene I noted the black burnt-out stumps.
‘There was a bush fire,’ I exclaimed excitedly. ‘Maybe three or four years ago and someone dropped some buffel grass seed.’
‘Oh, it’s magnificent.’ Sal was out of the car and walking among it too. We were like excited children.
There was no need to drive any further, but I couldn’t resist it. It was a winter oasis and teemed with wildlife. Mobs of kangaroos, now largely shot-out in the Maranoa, hopped a few lazy bounds and went on feeding. Pairs of plains turkeys flapped their enormous wings and glided just far enough to feel safe, and under the sparse regrowth—a mere metre high—it wasn’t difficult to spot the shy rat kangaroos.
The gloom we had both felt evaporated and left us fresh and positive. It reminded me of oppressive heat triggering a rain squall and afterwards leaving the air cool and crystal clear.
The lurching and the bumps didn’t seem so bad on the way back to the road. Near where the longhorns were lying up I had seen the sign of a track. We headed down it and held our breath. The track was washed out and badly gutted and the scene we drove into wasn’t surprising. It was a mini environmental disaster. A few days before a southerly change had brought a little rain and with the ground so compact and hard around the tanks and the bore, the water still lay everywhere in a hundred small puddles. With years of oil spillage the ground was dark grey and the oily water resisted evaporation.
It was impossible to guess when the bore was last operated. The tanks looked okay and about a hundred metres away I could see huge mounds of dirt. A dam had been sunk within the last three or four years, which was strange near a bore. Either the bore had been abandoned or no one had time to check water troughs and had opted for surface water.
The first things I inspected were the fuel tanks. People often let petrol engines run out, but not diesels. They have to be bled and sometimes air pockets form in the fuel lines. No one wants this bother and luckily both these engines had been turned off before they ran out.
The engine on the bore was a monster and larger than that on the south bore. I guessed it was a 1930s model Southern Cross. There can be nothing half-hearted about starting these antique diesels, even if they run every week. In this case, it would be essential to drive through the first kick on the engine gummed up by residues formed in a long cold stand. It’s not knowing what that kick will be that creates fear. In Queensland there are horrendous stories about the old diesels. Unlike the southern states, Queensland has always been big cattle country. Big mobs of cattle demand big volumes of water and in the old days only these big monsters could do the job. Men have been found dead, struck in the head by a flying crank handle. Cast iron tops have exploded like grenades.
Having oiled the compression chamber, I drove the crank down fast, released the compression and heaved into the stroke. It was an anti-climax. So heavy were the old rods, she didn’t kick back. There was a gentle throb and the handle fell away in my hand. The first few belches of smoke were black and heavy, like smoke from burning tyres, then the revs rapidly picked up.
The grin was soon wiped from my face. Diesel sprayed over me like a shower. I scrambled around the other side and jammed the fuel line back into the little overhead tank. Sal had been watching and ran to my assistance. I got her to hold the fuel line while I got some tie wire. After a lot of fiddling and poor Sal also getting covered in diesel, we had the line secure. Fifteen minutes later we heard the water gushing into the tank. It was brown, full of rust from the bore pipes.
With the engine that pumped water along the supply line I was not so lucky. It looked in terrible shape. I knew a mechanic in Mitchell and would have to bring him out. The main thing was the bore. I had water and the problem now was the cost of getting it out to the feed and getting it there in a hurry.
To wash the diesel off ourselves I filled a plastic bucket with the bore water. The tank had a leak at the base and there was no point in running the engine for long. I just wanted it to have a good warm-up and to blow out the old carbon. With Sal’s help again I also had to fill the cooling tank with water, which we tediously gathered from the tank leak. The cooling tank had a capacity of about one hundred litres. I stood on an old drum and Sal carried the water. We must have looked like something out of Jolliffe’s Outback working beside the two-metre-high engine and all the mess and debris.
Sal needed to spend a bit more time on diesel cleaning than me, so I walked over to the dam. There was some muddy water at the bottom. A fresh cattle pad led to it. This was where the longhorns drank. In a pinch our cattle could get one drink here. That gave me two days to get the water on. It was almost absurdly optimistic and I left the dam feeling dry in the mouth.
Back at the south bore the mustering was proceeding well. The cattle were filing through the gate into the holding paddock and the early arrivals were making no effort to leave. I am sure the old cows know when they are going to be moved to fresh feed. When the feed runs out and the stockmen arrive, they know. I’ve been certain of it for years.
Richard was the first in. He looked tired and the big bay had dry brown sweat stuck to the saddlecloth. He’d been over the high plateau country and zigzagged back through the two principal valleys. An hour or more later Nick and Tommy came in with about sixty head. Glancing over the mob I thought they’d got them all. If not, then only a few stragglers would be left. The boys said they had run well and for once everything had gone without a hitch.
There wasn’t much daylight left when we finally turned the horses loose after a feed of hay. The cattle looked hungry and with the long walk ahead the next day I felt very worried as I drove back to the camp. The boys would have to go it alone again. The cattle were far less robust than last time, but if the lead bolted we’d be in trouble. While they were doing the drive I had to go to Roma and see if I could find someone to urgently fibreglass the rusty tank.
Back at the camp Richie got a blazing fire going within minutes. There’s something about flames shooting tongues of red at the moment of sunset. It’s as primeval as the beginning of time. A mug of red wine goes back a few hundred years too, and Tommy must have thought I needed it. He poured his mother a mug as well and Nick thought he would carry the mood even further by playing ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ from the four-wheel-drive. By dark the nagging fear of no water and no feed had evaporated.
Sucking the draught from a short piece of hollow log, the fire smothered any sound from outside the camp and the headlights caught us all quite u
nprepared. The lights went out and I could see it was a typical hunting truck with a spotlight mounted above the cabin.
‘How yer goin’,’ growled our sudden guest. It was Johnny. The cheekiest face in the world.
‘Johnny!’ My mouth must have fallen open. The rumour was he had been given six months in jail since I had seen him in March. Trying to break up a fight, he had fired a harmless shot in the air. Anywhere but in a town, it may have had the desired effect and been forgotten.
‘It was reduced to six weeks,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘Stupid drunken spree. Fired a shot skyward to try and shock two blokes out of a dirty fight. It was near the pub and the cops were already on the way.’
Johnny had a case of beer in his arms, which he put on the ground and gently brought his girlfriend into the lantern light.
‘This is Tina,’ he said. Tina had clear features and long fair hair. She was in her early twenties. In a different place, she would have been pretty. When she spoke there was a southern accent.
I introduced them both to Sal and the boys. ‘Welcome to the Blank Space,’ Johnny responded, with that wild look in his eye. Looking at Sal he said, ‘Reckon you’d have to show up to keep him in line.’
Johnny pulled some stubbies from the case and passed them around. Sal and I declined as we had half a mug of wine each. I noticed Johnny screwed the top off for Tina.
‘Roo shooting?’ I asked.
‘Chiller’s payin’ ten bucks a carcass. If you get among ’em it’s not hard to drop four hundred bucks worth in a night.’
‘I don’t see many,’ I commented. The lack of kangaroos had bothered me for some months. In 1958 I’d flown to Blackall on the downs further west and I would have sighted two thousand kangaroos on the way to Maryvale Station.
‘Got to get onto a station not shot out. Not many left.’
Horses Too Are Gone, The Page 27